Martin Scorsese is urging filmmakers to save cinema, by doubling down on his call to fight comic book movie culture.
The storied filmmaker is revisiting the topic of comic book movies in a new profile for GQ. Despite facing intense blowback from filmmakers, actors and the public for the 2019 comments he made slamming the Marvel Cinematic Universe films — he called them theme parks rather than actual cinema — Scorsese isn’t shying away from the topic.
“The danger there is what it’s doing to our culture,” he told GQ. “Because there are going to be generations now that think … that’s what movies are.”
GQ’s Zach Baron posited that what Scorsese was saying might already be true, and the “Killers of the Flower Moon” filmmaker agreed.
“They already think that. Which means that we have to then fight back stronger. And it’s got to come from the grassroots level. It’s gotta come from the filmmakers themselves,” Scorsese continued to the outlet. “And you’ll have, you know, the Safdie brothers, and you’ll have Chris Nolan, you know what I mean? And hit ’em from all sides. Hit ’em from all sides, and don’t give up. … Go reinvent. Don’t complain about it. But it’s true, because we’ve got to save cinema.”
Scorsese referred to movies inspired by comic books as “manufactured content” rather than cinema.
“It’s almost like AI making a film,” he said. “And that doesn’t mean that you don’t have incredible directors and special effects people doing beautiful artwork. But what does it mean? What do these films, what will it give you?”
His forthcoming film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” had been on Scorsese’s wish list for several years; it’s based on David Grann’s 2017 nonfiction book of the same name. He called the story “a sober look at who we are as a culture.”
The film tells the true story of the murders of Osage Nation members by white settlers in the 1920s. DiCaprio originally was attached to play FBI investigator Tom White, who was sent to the Osage Nation within Oklahoma to probe the killings. The script, however, underwent a significant rewrite.
“After a certain point,” the filmmaker told Time, “I realized I was making a movie about all the white guys.”
The dramatic focus shifted from White’s investigation to the Osage and the circumstances that led to them being systematically killed with no consequences.
The character of White now is played by Jesse Plemons in a supporting role. DiCaprio stars as the husband of a Native American woman, Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), an oil-rich Osage woman, and member of a conspiracy to kill her loved ones in an effort to steal her family fortune.
Scorsese worked closely with Osage Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear and his office from the beginning of production, consulting producer Chad Renfro told Time. On the first day of shooting, the Oscar-winning filmmaker had an elder of the nation come to set to say a prayer for the cast and crew.
I mean, he’s not wrong. But there has always been a ton of shitty action movies with the same cut and paste plot. Marvel just tweaked the formula.
And it’s not like good movies aren’t still being made. The Marvel movies are historically bad at winning awards. There have been a handful of nominations, but not a lot of wins. The wins always go to good movies that deserve them.
Sure, the Marvel movies pull in more money than other movies, but the money makers are usually trash. Marvel is like the McDonald’s of movies. It’s going to pull in way more money than a fine dining establishment, but not because it’s good, because it’s the garbage that the public will take out their wallet for. There is space in the market for both of these things.
Look, I didn’t love Guardians 3, it’s a conservative, Christian movie and I don’t agree with most of its premises.
But there wasn’t a dry eye in the house by the end of that, and I’m pretty sure most of them know what “it meant”, and it certainly wasn’t “almost like AI making a film”. Ditto for Across the Spider-Verse, whcih is a progressive movie I do agree with.
There’s always been this argument that successfull movies are bad, and I’ve never liked it. It’s never been true. There are tons of bad films that make their money back, but for every Air Force One there is a Die Hard or Back to the Future (more conservative movies I don’t agree with but are very well made, go figure).
So yeah, I do agree that Oscar bait keeps Oscar baiting, and that superheroes aren’t killing cinema, which is a hard take to roll with this year in particular. But no, I actively don’t think superhero movies or genre movies are worthless or trash, any more than I think westerns are trash or action movies are trash.
TIL that somehow it makes sense to consider the classic back to the future somehow a fucking conservative movie. LMAO might wanna lay off whatever heavy drug you’d been ingesting
Less conservative and more a product of its time, so let’s say centre with a whiff of Reagan.
But yeah, hey, that’s a thing. If you learned it today and you’re curious about it there are decades of criticism and analysis about it. I am very far from being the first to point that out, among other things because I was a toddler when it came out.
Right on, those are some very fair points. I guess calling them trash is a bit far.
But out of genuine curiosity, could you expand on how the movies you mentioned are conservative Christian movies? I know Die Hard takes place on Christmas, but that’s all I’m picking up.
I have absolutely no idea what they mean by conservative/progressive movie. I too would like to know, because I’m utterly baffled.
How is Guardians 3 a conservative Christian movie? You know the director, James Gunn, is very outspokenly progressive, right?
I responded to this above, but just to clarify on this point, I mean small c conservative here. Which is absolutely not inconsistent with Gunn being a normal person who is not an actual fascist.
I mean that it’s a conservative movie in that it explicitly religious and does take the stance that science and technocratic “let’s change the world” science is inherently equal to hubris and negative, while the positive flipside is enduring suffering, embracing spirituality and being rewarded with a happy afterlife. There is absolutely a progressive read of those beliefs, there has been for hundreds of years. Gunn seems to be explicitly aligning with it here, and that’s fine, but that’s still a (small c) conservative viewpoint.
Hell, I’ll go one further: a lot of people on the opposite side of that argument are today, in fact, actual fascists. It’s not hard to go find examples of atheist dicks online, or of technocratic tyrants. Turns out your religious beliefs are not connected to whether you’re a good person. That doesn’t mean the Catholic worldview isn’t inherently conservative. I was using the word philosophically, not politically.
There is space in the market for both of these things.
Not so sure about that, and that might be the problem. Marvel/Disney is both rather monocultural and a ridiculously huge draw and brand that can suck the oxygen out of the marketing ecosystem. It could be true that the comic cinema industry is genuinely taking eyes off of other things and creating a less diverse cinema experience per capita. Even if for most people it’s only marginal, a slightly alternative take on an action or hero film with a slightly different angle or message or style is still diversity that might be important and valuable.
It would be interesting to compare this to the action and block buster movies of the past. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that there was a noticeable diversity and I’m going to say thoughtfulness amongst big films of the past compared to today. I’m open to being wrong of course, but it’s worth thinking about, just because big-corp monopolisation can easily have these effects.
I’m partly influenced by a recent rewatch of Jurassic Park and noticing how subtly thoughtful it was while also being basically a straight action film (after the set up at least). There’s even a moment (when they first see the raptors being fed) that’s basically kinda vegan message or at least a critique or contrast between humans and “the monsters” of the film, done entirely but very clearly through editing and directing … it was really nice actually.
You’re wrong.
But to be clear, when you say “the past” you are talking about maybe twenty years. Thirty, tops.
Because people WERE in fact saying this about Star Wars. The notion that the new Hollywood brats were turning it into a commercial dystopia was very much a thing. So the old school action films you’re talking about are the blockbusters ranging from 1978 to maybe 2000 when the Blade, X-Men and Spider-Man films start building momentum for comic book movies.
Before then you’re in Old Hollywood territory, where the “action” stuff is pulp and exploitation in the margins. The status quo you remember is late 20th century kids bringing the crappy b-list stuff they grew up with into big money blockbuster fare.
Ummm … wrong about what exactly … I don’t that’s clear from your post?
Otherwise, we can both be right. The action blockbuster movie thing, as far as I understand, and as you state, was definitely a creature of the 70s up to now. And it’s also probably important and valuable to criticise that too. Danny Boyle, for instance, is on record saying that the great sin of Star Wars is that it transformed the idea of an “Adult film” into a pornographic film when it used to just be a normal drama film about adult and interesting things which have been pushed out of the industry by relatively childish blockbusters. Comic films can easily be seen as just an extension of that. My point was that we might find that it’s been a continuous collapse of “Adult films” under the weight of blockbusters to the point that the blockbusters aren’t even trying anymore to imitate, at least at times, the more nuanced “adult” films of the past.
In the late-70s/80s it was slasher movies. In the 80s/90s it was Rambo-style action movies, or Lethal Weapon and Fatal Attraction-style thrillers.
There have always been Hollywood bandwagons.
The difference is that back then the major studios made a bunch of films of all scopes and budgets, while today those same studios make fewer, more expensive movies.
If Scorsese was a young man today - or Robert Altman or William Friedkin, whoever - he probably wouldn’t get a chance to make a Raging Bull, he’d be steered towards a superhero film with - of course - NO final cut. The one exception is Christopher Nolan. And even he did an entire superhero TRILOGY.
Taking what Marty is saying and putting it another way - major studio content is not driven by a director’s creative vision in the current environment, but by producers… the suits and their market research.
Taking what Marty is saying and putting it another way - major studio content is not driven by a director’s creative vision in the current environment, but by producers… the suits and their market research.
I’m by no means an expert but was that ever different? Making movies always was very expensive, so the people in charge obviously had to have money and then try to use that to make more money. That alone leads to rather conservative decisions regarding which movies should be produced and which shouldn’t. Artistic merit isn’t something I believe ever had much sway in Hollywood unless some directors actually used their previous success to bully the rich cats in charge to trust them or outright finance the movie themself. And that I guess is rather rare. I think the only thing really different today, is that market research today is way more advanced than it was in the 60’s or 70’s.
Making lower budget films and giving artistic freedom to their directors allowed them to:
- Spread the risk.
- Catch lightning in a bottle, sometimes.
This was also in the days when a film could play in theaters for months, breathe and grow.
Now, they want every movie they release to make 200 million in the first weekend, with a marketing carpet-bombing blitz.
In Scorsese’s 70s heyday, a “modest success” was seen by the studio suits as a success, they made many of these and were happy about it.
Nowadays, a “modest success” is seen as a fizzle. Half a billion or bust.